I purchased my first Amazon Echo in April 2016. At the time I noted in my personal journal that the threat modelling used to justify the purchase said it was probably okay at the time. I also said and repeated for a while that I know at some point in the future I would need to likely get rid of the device for privacy reasons My friends who were big into security looked at me like I was crazy when I bought it and talked about. Most everyone else at the time had no idea what I was talking about. Those the new of the echo thought it was cool.
When we moved to the UK I purchased an Amazon Tap. The Tap is now discontinued portable speaker with Alexa. We used it around the house before we moved since the other echo was in transit. I packed it in our luggage and when we arrived in England and got our internet we had a music speaker. Even now we mostly use the smart speaker for listening to music and setting timers. Right after we moved simply having a speaker in the empty house was the goal.
Once we were settled in the wired Amazon Echo ended up in our bedroom. The Tap wound up in the kitchen so we could move it around and use it when we needed to. One of the advantages of the tap was that you could disable the always listening mode of Alexa. That way you could turn it on only when you wanted it to do something. It was less convenient but more secure. That was a selling point for me. Then we just got lazy and left it on all the time to unknowingly call out for it and have it not hear us two or three times before it reacted.
When I was debating on building out and an Internet of things network in the house I purchased another Amazon Ech Plus or whatever they called it. It was the version of the Echo that had the ability to become a home hub. That went into the guest room/my office.
Over time I kept reading stories of the privacy concerns people had with the the Echo speakers. I also experienced one or two shall we say oddities with the speakers that made me think it was listening a little more then you realise it should be. I convinced M to use a plain old “dumb” Bluetooth speaker for music in the Kitchen. I was able to get her one for £25. I also purchased myself a portable Bluetooth Speaker so I could listen to my audiobooks. With that new speaker I unplugged the bedroom echo. With M’s Bluetooth Speaker I intended to unplug the Amazon Tap in the kitchen however I didn’t feel that M was comfortable enough with just the Bluetooth speaker to do that.
Around this time Apple did a funny thing. They released the HomePod mini. Based on my current threat model that was my opinion the answer to my technical challenge. We had some gift card money so I purchased a few of the Home Pod Mini’s at John Lewis when they came out. I immediately removed all three of the Echo’s that we had.
The home pod mini is not as feature rich as an Amazon Echo. For what we use it for it has so far been good enough. That’s another story for a different day. The reason I bring it up is it was the final piece to the puzzle that enabled me to throw out the Echo’s and still have a relatively safe alternative.
Technically I did not throw anything out. I gave one of them to my nephew and another to a friend of mine. I think we still have one left to give away or may have given it away already. I cannot recall. We also still have Amazon Fire’s that the girls use. I severely limit what they can do and there is no always on listening. So it’s not like I just stopped using Amazon hardwa. It’s that we don’t use their what has always been a bit spooky audio devices. And now if you’re thinking about it I am not a hypocrite. Apple’s privacy policy and how they use the recordings on the surface seems much more palatable then what Amazon does. That means at least for now I’m happy to leave Apple devices listening in the home and not Amazons.